Low voucher usage prompts revamp of self-service process

In 2010, Silver Peak and ReadyTech partnered together to deliver virtual instructor-led training (VILT) classes. Two years later—after a successful partnership—Silver Peak decided to add self-paced training to their offerings using ReadyTech’s Self-Paced Training Solution.

To access the ReadyTech virtual training labs, students needed to request a voucher from Silver Peak by emailing their training department. Silver Peak then purchased a voucher from ReadyTech, and the voucher was emailed to the student. While this voucher system was working, Silver Peak found that 35% of students were not completing the virtual training labs because it took the training department too much time to respond to voucher requests.

“Students were requesting vouchers, but it could take us up to 3 days to respond,” explains Steve Russell, Training Manager at Silver Peak Systems. “When a student requests a voucher, they are generally ready to start the lab immediately. Our audience is global—and if someone requested a voucher on a weeknight in the US, we might not respond until sometime the following day. If it was a Friday night, we wouldn’t see the request until Monday—or longer if it was a holiday weekend here. As a result of this time lag, many students became focused on other work tasks and never redeemed their vouchers to complete the training course. We were missing our window of opportunity to deliver training in a timely manner that was convenient for the student.”

He adds, “We knew we needed to change this system. The student interest was there, but the response time just wasn’t working. We needed a self-service process, so we turned to ReadyTech for help.”

Requesting virtual training lab vouchers autonomously

ReadyTech got to work developing a process for students to request virtual training lab vouchers autonomously. To make it a truly self-service system, ReadyTech built an e-commerce portal that not only allows customers to offer self-paced training, but makes it possible for students to buy vouchers and begin courses whenever they are ready. In addition to keeping track of all redeemed vouchers, ReadyTech manages every financial transaction within the portal and provides flexible billing capabilities.

“The new voucher process is very smooth,” says Russell. “Not only is the self-service option easier for students, but it saves us time and money. Once we rolled it out, I waited to see what problems would arise, but it worked flawlessly. We are extremely happy with the results.”

In fact, after implementing ReadyTech’s new voucher system, Silver Peak experienced an 80 to 90% increase in the number of students redeeming vouchers. “This is a very impressive increase,” explains Russell. “Most of the vouchers are now being used immediately, and students are completing their training because they no longer have to wait for us to respond to get virtual training lab access.”

ReadyTech has helped us improve our instructor-led and self-paced training delivery. We routinely receive comments such as, ‘This is the best training I’ve ever had.’ and ReadyTech is definitely part of the reason for our success.Steve Russell, Training Manager

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Challenges

Manual process led to delays in response time

Delays resulted in 35% of students not completing labs

Lower levels of student training

Product adoption compromised

Solution

ReadyTech, in collaboration with Silver Peak, developed an e-commerce portal that allowed customers to offer self-paced courses and students to request online lab vouchers autonomously. The e-commerce portal enables students to begin self-paced courses whenever they are ready, keeps track of redeemed vouchers, and manages all financial transactions for Silver Peak’s training department.

About ReadyTech

ReadyTech is the easiest and most cost-effective way to deliver worldwide IT training. Our proprietary technology eliminates the most cumbersome, technical and administrative functions of running an IT training program. Students can connect through a browser from anywhere in the world to a high performance lab-environment suited for their needs. Our online training software gives instructors complete oversight and control of the lab environment and virtual classroom